Other people do this. I assume, because only Louis' post popped up in my timeline, but hey, one's enough.

I've never done a write-up on stuff I use, but I'm a sucker for reading this kind of posts, so I figured I'd join in on the fun. Here's to this becoming a yearly tradition.

By the way, an up-to-date list is always available at my /uses page.

Photo by Tim Johnson on Unsplash

Hardware

I mostly type away at my desk. I've used a 2021 14" M1 MacBook Pro for most of this year (and the past three). It works fantastic. For work, I now switched to a 16" M4 MacBook Pro. It's mostly the same, but the nanotexture anti-glare display thing… Eye-watering stuff.

I mostly keep the laptop hooked up to a 32" external monitor, the BenQ PD3205U. I love this thing to death. I can plug a single USB-C cable and I get a big 4K screen, charging, more ports, all in one go. Had this for a year-ish, can't see myself switching for the foreseeable future.

This year my wife and I moved out of our house and are temporarily hanging out in temporary accommodations, so my setup is not as good as it used to be (it'll be again soon). I'm not using my nice Røde desk mic for meetings these days. I do use a Logitech MX Brio webcam though—another lovely piece of tech.

I quietly type on an Apple Magic Keyboard. I do not need another hobby. I've used this thing for, I don't know, 4-5 years? Anyway it has Touch ID™ and the keys have short travel. I am very fond of both those things.

A couple months back I upgraded from an older iPad Air to a 13" M4 iPad Pro. What a lovely device. It's too thin, but man it's cool. I draw a lot of my "educational" stuff on there, illustrations for my blog and book(s), and whatnot. I watch all the media I watch on there. I read papers on there. Also got a keyboard for it now—not the Apple one though. The Apple one is silly IMO, because you cannot get your iPad to stand (ever watched a movie or something!?) without the keyboard in the way. Take away the keyboard, and you have no case… and no way to get the iPad to stand. Cool. I got a Logitech Combo Touch instead. It does both things. At least it's still expensive, so you get that Apple feeling uh.

Headphones are still the same as they've been for the past few years. AirPods Max (in black) at the desk, and AirPods Pro 2 or whatever version for going around. AirPods Pro are my favorite piece of tech ever, I carry them everywhere.

Software

I have a particular type of love for software and apps and whatnot. This list would change all the time, but here's my end-of-2024 snapshot, in no particular order.

Apple Mail for email (Fastmail for personal, GMail for work). It works and I don't get enough email to need anything fancier. Fantastical for calendars. Love it. I use the "openings" feature quite a bit. Todoist for tracking tasks. This last one is a recent entry—I switched in late 2024, coming from Apple Reminders. Apple's apps are generally good, but I want my tasks to be readable from other apps (see Obsidian) and whatnot, so there ya go.

Some easy ones: I still listen to music on Spotify, and I still store passwords in 1Password.

This year I switched from Safari to Arc for browsing the interwebs. I like it. I also recently switched to Ghostty for my terminal, coming from iTerm. Super nice but not a big difference for someone like me, since I use VS Code's terminal 95% of the time.

I started using Raycast over Alfred this year too. Plugin ecosystem is nicer. I don't want to pay $9/mo or however much it is for their pro subscription (I can't justify it), but that leaves me without sync across computers, which is annoying. We'll see what sticks.

I still use:

• VS Code for writing software. I like it.
• Obsidian for taking notes. I love it.
• Notion for storing DB-like information. I keep a home inventory here, info about my car and whatnot, and all that sort of stuff. I find it to work better than Obsidian, easier to share pages with my wife (like our dog's info), and I don't know, I can't seem to get out of it.